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Cryptocoryne toxic to shrimp?

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I was chatting to someone at my LFS yesterday as I'm planning a rescape of my shrimp tank. I was saying how I had to redo the tank anyway as I accidentally pulled up a huge crypt and it unplugged the underlay of deponit mix (soil) which now mucks up the water. The roots on the crypt were a foot long, it was a real pain in a nano tank! Anyway, to cut my rambling...he said that trimming or uprooting crypts releases chemicals in the water than can be toxic to shrimp. Has anyone heard of this?

I thought to start with he was referring to pesticides used in some farms in the Far East and I started reassuring him that I'd had these plants for more than a year...but no, he genuinely meant that all crypts leech something toxic when cut or uprooted.

Never heard of this neither, guess there's only one way to truly find out.

And thinking back, I uprooted and replanted florida sunset crypts in my 150 many times and I had a lot of rcs in there at the time, never lost any to poisoning as far as I know, more like my rainbows kept attacking them. I had one that lived in the tank in a little spot for months so I'd have to lean towards to side of not believing this.

Cryptocoryne belong to a large group of plants known as aroids, which include some other well known species like taro and pothos. Certain species of aroids are known to contain raphide crystals in their tissue that can severely irritate anything that tries to eat them. Perhaps that is what he is referring to.

Personally I've never observed any negative effects on my Amano shrimp after trimming or uprooting crypts.

Yeah never heard of it. It's probably one of those things where someone trimmed a crypt and all his shrimp died. So he attributes the death to the crypt. Not remembering he did a PWC and forgot his conditioner. lol